Technology

In the fall of 2009, Capitol/EMI issued a lav­ish and long-awaited box set, col­lect­ing the cat­a­logue of record­ings of one of the world’s most beloved, and most impor­tant, pop music groups. The music this group made was not only great in its own right but rev­o­lu­tion­ary and hugely influ­en­tial. Whole gen­res of pop­u­lar music of the last forty years are impos­si­ble to imag­ine, and would have been impos­si­ble to cre­ate, with­out the legacy of this band, arguably the great­est of all that came out of the rise of pop cul­ture and mass media. That band is, of course, Kraftwerk.

This entry is part 4 of 10 in the series Great­est Hits(For the sea­son, and my Win­ter Fundraiser, I’m repost­ing some old favorites.) This image proudly not used with per­mis­sion. What does it mean to be dig­i­tal? Only a com­puter can say for sure, and they’re not talk­ing. As for us human’s, we’re still ana­log in(…)

One of the major opera events of the year is the pre­miere per­for­mances of Charles Wuorinen’s oper­atic ver­sion of Broke­back Moun­tain. The opera comes directly from the story by Annie Proulx, who her­self trans­formed her writ­ing into the libretto. There is an obsta­cle, how­ever: these are at the Teatro Real in Madrid, and the closest(…)

If you can’t enjoy the clas­sic bour­geois plea­sures of a coun­try house and/or for­eign travel when the sun rushes down at you and the ozone makes your throat ache, you can at least dream the dream in real­ity, so to speak. My friends at medici.tv have cre­ated a new ver­sion of their mobile app, dedicated(…)

Who among us would not want to be at the Aix-en-Provence Fes­ti­val? Since the press announce­ment landed in my in-box at the begin­ning of this year, I’ve thought about it every day. The plea­sure of atten­dance would be two-fold: to enjoy great music in a beau­ti­ful locale, and to know that I had achieved some(…)

An intel­lec­tual is a man who says a sim­ple thing in a dif­fi­cult way; an artist is a man who says a dif­fi­cult thing in a sim­ple way. Sum­mer has just begun, and that means it’s not too soon to think about where you’ll be sit­ting in come the fall. The brochures and book­lets are(…)

While I’m not inter­ested in pro­mot­ing con­sumerism, I do like to sug­gest music worth spend­ing your money on, and this time of year, that often means rec­om­mended record­ings (and the 2011 Best of Year lists will be appear­ing this week here at The Big City). But I want to offer an intrigu­ing idea for a(…)

The story of how the dig­i­ti­za­tion of music revealed the music industry’s feet of clay has been told more than once, but it’s never been prop­erly explained. File shar­ing may be the pre­vail­ing symp­tom, but it’ s not the actual cause. Some­thing pre­ceded the cre­ation of Nap­ster, and that was the desire, even the need for many music fans, to have a Nap­ster. As far as I have seen, after the many books and arti­cles on the sub­ject, no one has touched on the par­ties respon­si­ble, the deci­sions they made, what they thought they were doing and how they were fool­ing them­selves. Per­haps it’s because it’s been told from the stand­point of busi­ness, when it’s really a story about music.

Bad, hec­tor­ing, scold­ing writ­ing? Seri­ously, this kind of arti­cle is invari­ably a mis­take, a set of gen­er­a­tional asser­tions that rely on noth­ing more than per­sonal anec­dote and prej­u­dice. Are we still in awe of the sup­posed ‘mul­ti­task­ing skills’ of all gen­er­a­tions that suc­ceed ours? There’s no think­ing, just com­plain­ing. Jazz will sur­vive many gen­er­a­tions, as(…)

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The Pierre Boulez fun will even­tu­ally stop, as there’s a limit to what is left for him to do, as cer­tainly hardly any record­ings (if any) that are not in cir­cu­la­tion. Join­ing the fun of last years, excel­lent, valu­able and highly rec­om­mended Pierre Boulez: Com­plete Colum­bia Album Col­lec­tion is the com­pan­ion box from Deutsche Gramaphon,(…)

I sent my Bitches Brew man­u­script in last night, and will have an update on pub­li­ca­tion date some­time dur­ing the next cou­ple of months. I wrote approx­i­mately 70,000 words total, in all my work, for Jan­u­ary, so reg­u­lar blog­ging will resume some­time next week. In the mean­time, enjoy the video.

Over at 333sounds, my edi­tor announced that there will be a new open call for book pro­pos­als, with notice and guide­lines going up at the end of June, and pro­pos­als dues in early August. Time to get your shit together. Series Update/Open Call News/You’ll Want to Read This One: < block­quote> Dear Read­ers, For the(…)

Tonight I’m cov­er­ing the sec­ond install­ment of the Argento Ensemble’s “Mahler in New York” series, which pairs con­tem­po­rary com­poses with cham­ber arrange­ments of Mahler. Tonight the fea­ture is the Schoenberg/Riehn reduc­tion of Das Lied von der Erde, and I’m expect­ing big things after Argento’s tremen­dous play­ing of Sym­phony No. 9. Dur­ing a break in this morning’s(…)

Bora Yoon’s Sunken Cathe­dral is my Critic’s Choice this week at the New York Clas­si­cal Review. The word on tick­ets is that there are very few left, so if you’re inter­ested, order them now. For back­ground, lis­ten to our talk with her on the Dec-Jan Rail Tracks Pod­cast. And pick up her CD, one of the(…)

My work on the Bitches Brew book has hit fifth gear, which is good because it’s due at the end of the month! I have been, of course, lis­ten­ing to a ton of Miles Davis records, not just the music in and around Bitches Brew but what came before and after. The con­text of Miles’(…)

I picked this up from Alex Ross, who picked it up from some­one who goes by CK Dex­ter Haven (naw mang, I’m the one with unsus­pected depths, that’s why my wife mar­ried me). Make a list of your favorite num­bered sym­phonies, one through nine. You might be sur­prised by the results. Here’s mine (I share(…)